Artist Statement

My landscapes are not about a slavish accounting of nature. My focus instead is on the energetic interaction of color, line, form and texture. My paintings are a build-up of shapes through color. As I explore the relationships between shape and color, my goal is to hopefully create an elegant balance between geometry and natural forms, between visual reference and non-objectivity.

The paintings begin with the simple problem of two or three color relationships. In the process of exploring these relationships, I build form and explore color that eventually evolve into complex interactions resulting in energetic design. I usually work with two or three paintings simultaneously. I lay down the underpainting and build a bare compositional structure. Then as the work progresses I tend to focus on one painting at a time, layering color detail and shapes, carefully contemplating each decision and its effect on the relationship between the forms and the rest of the overall design scheme.

I work with oil paint. The luxurious layering qualities of oil paint is incomparable. The rich pigments ensure vibrancy and luminosity unmet by other painting mediums. The thicker consistency satisfies my need for texture, and the blending quality allows for seamless gradients.

While my work would be considered figurative abstraction, it is very much shaped and informed by the natural environment that I live in. Working in this manner helps me resolve the the duality of life, the struggle between inner and outer reality; between the physical and spiritual world. It helps me balance my need for self expression, the independence from the real world, the desire for my work to exist in its own visual reality, yet, pay homage to the identifiable forms of nature. My wish is for my work to evoke in the viewer emotion and contemplation rather than a straightforward depiction of reality.